KOREA

President Trump’s Wednesday fundraiser in Missouri is raising eyebrows in the news, as he suggested to donors that he is considering withdrawing US troops from South Korea if he can’t get a better trade deal out of their government.

Trump didn’t go into tremendous details about whether this meant a full withdrawal or a drawdown, and a lot of analysts were very dismissive of the report, suggesting it was an empty threat and just a negotiating tactic.

As far as firings under President Donald Trump go, Rex Tillerson's is not the most humiliating. That dishonor would have to go to former chief of staff Reince Priebus. He learned he was fired through three Trump tweets and soon after was decoupled from the president's motorcade.

But Tillerson's departure is nonetheless a slap in the face to a former CEO who advised and quarreled with a man who used to play one on TV. As Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Steve Goldstein said in a statement Tuesday, "The secretary did not speak to the president this morning and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve." Ouch.

The United States is monitoring information indicating that North Korea may be running a large underground military base in Syria that could be used for advanced weaponry and nuclear-related work, according to regional reports and U.S. officials tracking the situation.

The newly appointed US Secretary of State and CIA Chief are hardliners who will obediently follow President Donald Trump’s course for an even more confrontational foreign policy, former CIA officials told RT.

The appointment of Mike Pompeo as the US Secretary of State and “hardliner” Gina Haspel, who was picked to be his replacement as the head of the CIA, “confirms that the administration is moving to the right; to a more confrontational and a more aggressive foreign policy,” Philip Giraldi, a former CIA intelligence officer, told RT.

President Donald Trump’s possible meeting with Kim Jong Un to discuss North Korean nuclear weapons is considered a fairly unpredictable event. It’s worth a look at how an economist might use game theory to think about such a summit, if only to explain why there is more room for things to go wrong than to get better.

Hopes for the release of three American citizens imprisoned in North Korea got a big boost by the news of a possible summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Freeing the prisoners would be relatively low-hanging fruit and a sign of goodwill by Kim. It would also mark something of a personal success for Trump, who has highlighted the issue since last June, when University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier died days after North Korea turned him over to American authorities.

A senior South Korean government official’s remarks about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un conveying “another message” besides his summit proposal to US President Donald Trump through a special envoy’s delegation that recently visited Pyongyang is raising questions about what the content may have been. The remarks came during a talk with South Korean correspondents in Washington on Mar. 9, as the official responded to questions about the message Kim wanted communicated to Trump.

“There was a message that he wanted given to the US,” the official said, adding that they could “not disclose everything that was exchanged between the heads of state.”

When asked for specifics, the official said the message was “part of trust-building efforts to ensure that the summit happens.” When asked if it concerned denuclearization, the official replied only that it was “very comprehensive in content.”

In the aftermath of Trump's unexpected announcement that at the invitation of Kim Jong Un, he would meet with the North Korean leader in what is set to be a historic meeting, the first of its kind between the leaders of the two nations at a still unknown location, it emerged that not even Trump's top diplomats were aware of the impromptu decision.

According to press reports, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during his ongoing Africa trip that he spoke with President Trump on his decision to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un only after it was announced by South Korean officials and the administration. Speaking in Djibouti, Tillerson was asked about his months-long public position that the time was not right for sitting down with North Korea.

President Donald Trump deserves credit for boldly accepting an invitation to negotiate with North Korean President Kim Jong Un but needs to be careful because this is high-stakes diplomacy, former UN Ambassador and Bill Richardson said on Sunday.

Richardson, a veteran negotiator with North Korea, was speaking on "The Cats Roundtable" radio show on AM 970 in New York hosted by John Catsimatidis. He said he was flabbergasted and speechless when he heard about Trump's decision to negotiate with the North Korean leader.

Richardson, a Democrat, admitted that he has "real reservations about the president's foreign policy. But on this one, I think he's gambling for the right reason, [because] things with North Korea couldn't be worse."

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has reportedly agreed to hold a summit meeting with South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in next month and impose a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests if Pyongyang holds talks with the US, a senior South Korean official said Tuesday.

Chung Eui-yong, South Korea’s presidential national security director, said the third-ever summit between the two Koreas would take place in late April at the Joint Security Area in the Panmunjom border village at the Demilitarized Zone.

President Donald Trump said Saturday he believes North Korea will abide by its pledge to suspend missile tests while he prepares for a summit by May with the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

Trump noted in a tweet that North Korea has refrained from such tests since November and said Kim “has promised not to do so through our meetings.”

“I believe they will honor that commitment,” the president wrote.

Trump shocked many inside and outside his administration Thursday when he told South Korean officials who had just returned from talks in North Korea that he would be willing to accept Kim’s meeting invitation.

While the international community has welcomed Donald Trump’s positive answer to Kim Jong-un’s invitation for direct talks, hoping that it could pave the way for a peaceful settlement to the North Korean issue, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has revealed Washington’s key weakness.

In an interview with Dutch tabloid Algemeen Dagblad, Hillary Clinton said that the Trump administration "was not recognizing the danger” in discussing denuclearization with North Korea and underscored a lack of experienced diplomats capable of handling the talks.

"If you want to talk to Kim Jong-un about his nuclear weapons you need experienced diplomats. These are people familiar with the dossiers and who know the North Koreans and their language," she told the media outlet.

Representative Gene Ward (R–Hawaii Kai, Kalama Valley), a member of the House Military Affairs & Int'l Relations Committee, lauded President Donald Trump today for the President's acceptance of a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. In a letter to the President, Ward also urged Trump to hold the meeting in Honolulu.

"This is truly historic and they're actually going to talk about the denuclearization of North Korea," Ward said. "The leaders of the United States and North Korea have never even talked to each other on the phone and now they're scheduled to meet face-to-face.

"This meeting is especially important for Hawaii since we are well within striking distance of North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The data wiping part of Olympic Destroy looks, at first glance, exactly the same as the Lazarus Group wiper used in the Bluenoroff malware responsible for the $81m cyber-heist against the Central Bank of Bangladesh last year – even down to the header.

“We can say with 100 per cent confidence that the attribution to Lazarus is false,” he said.

But the wiper function’s Rich header, which contains some metadata, included hints to the development environment the code was written in. The Olympic Destroyer code showed it was developed using Visual Studio 10 and made to look as though the code was the same as the C++-written Bluenoroff.

“The only reasonable conclusion that can be made is that the Rich header in the wiper was deliberately copied from the Bluenoroff samples; it is a fake and has no connection with the contents of the binary,” Kaspersky's technical report on the matter states.

Issuing a statement on Twitter overnight, President Trump said that a meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is in the process of being planned, but that in the meantime, US sanctions against North Korea will all remain in place until a final agreement is reached.

Administration officials are presenting this as part of a general need to maintain “maximum pressure” throughout the talks. This reflects a position within the government that the talks themselves are vindication of US sanctions and threats.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said as much during his visit to Kenya on Friday, that the talks showed the “policy we’ve put in place and executed by the State Department has succeeded.” This policy involved decades of mounting sanctions and acrimony.

Olympic diplomacy seems to be working on the Korean peninsula. After a pair of South Korean envoys visited Pyongyang, they issued a promising communiqué. “The North Korean side clearly stated its willingness to denuclearize,” the statement said. Considering that the Korean crisis and a derpy emergency management official had Hawaiians jumping down manholes a few months ago, this news comes as a relief.

Then comes the rub. The South Korean statement continued: “[North Korea] made it clear that it would have no reason to keep nuclear weapons if the military threat to the North was eliminated and its security guaranteed [my emphasis].”

In other words, the DPRK is saying — reasonably — we’ll get rid of our nukes but only if you promise not to invade us. That guarantee would have to be issued by two countries: South Korea and the United States.

President Trump has announced that an offer conveyed to the United States from North Korea by way of South Korea’s visiting delegation, initially speculated to be a proposal for direct talks, is “almost beyond that,” and stands to be one of the most significant diplomatic proposals in decades. The offer was announced publicly by South Korea’s National Security Adviser Chung Eui-Yong.

North Korea is inviting President Trump to directly meet with Kim Jong-un, with the two talking about North Korea disarming its nuclear program. North Korea added that they would pause nuclear and missile development during the talks.

South Korea’s delegation of high-ranking officials visiting Pyongyang earlier this week was an historic move. A meeting between Trump and Kim would be far, far more important, which could reasonably be called the biggest diplomatic measure on North Korea since the Korean War.

Webmaster's Commentary:

It looks like Netanyahu told Trump, "Forget North Korea. Your job is to attack Iran!"

NORTH Korea could be willing to halt the deadly nuclear weapons programme but Donald Trump’s administration lacks the expertise to engage in such sensitive talks as the White House lacks the strategic expertise to engage constructively, according to former officials and analysts.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Another attempt by the military industrial complex to undermine the White House and push for profitable war!

Washington has been hostile toward North Korea throughout the entire post-WW II era because of its sovereign independence – not for any threat the country poses.

The DPRK never attacked another nation throughout its entire history, threatening none now.

Unless provoked to believe its security is gravely threatened, there’s isn’t the remotest possibility it would attack another country.

If Washington and the West had normalized relations with Pyongyang, respecting its sovereignty, its leadership never would have pursued the development of nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Barely 12 hours after a "breakthrough" report that North Korean leaders might be willing to shut down their nuclear program and surrender their existing nukes in exchange for assurances that the regime's safety would be guaranteed, the State Department announced that it would impose yet another round of economic sanctions on the North - its second batch of sanctions within the span of two weeks, per Reuters.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un informed a South Korean envoy that he was willing to discuss scrapping his nuclear program if the US was also willing to make some security guarantees.

"The North Korean side clearly stated its willingness to denuclearize," a statement from the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in noted. "It made it clear that it would have no reason to keep nuclear weapons if the military threat to the North was eliminated and its security guaranteed."

Commercial satellite images show that a key reactor at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear research facility may have resumed production of plutonium for nuclear weapons, according to an article posted on 38 North, a website dedicated to analysis of North Korea.

Analysts Frank Pabian, Joseph Bermudez and Jack Liu said the photos from February 25 indicate that the 5-megawatt reactor at the facility continued to show signs of operation as indicated by steam-vapor plumes emanating from the generator hall and river ice melt near the reactor.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Hardly compelling evidence, but then again, nuclear weapons are the only real guarantee against invasion, so who could blame North Korea, given the track record of the US government in breaking promises not to invade nations that disarm.

NORTH KOREAN leader Kim Jong Un met senior South Korean government officials for the first time and said it is his “firm will to vigorously advance” inter-Korean ties and pursue reunification, the North's official news agency said on Tuesday.

"There were amazing pictures of the Korean delegate… they went to North Korea on a South Korean military aircraft… and the most interesting thing, truly unprecedented, is that they actually met with Kim Jong-un within three hours — that is truly something that has never happened before," she added, before saying that "if all goes well I think we're going to have some major breakthrough."

North Korea said it is willing to talk to the United States about abandoning its nuclear weapons program if its security can be guaranteed, South Korea's government said Tuesday.

If confirmed, the move would mark a significant departure from North Korea's previous stance on its nuclear program and give momentum to South Korea's efforts to bring the United States and North Korea together for talks.

The North said it would stop testing nuclear weapons and missiles for the duration of any "candid talks" it may hold with Washington, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

In a tweet Tuesday, President Trump said the announcement signaled "possible progress" in efforts to get North Korea to discuss its nuclear program.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Korea must reunify now, or North Korea will be attacked by the US as soon as it gives up its weapons of deterrence.

On February 27, a lengthy New York Times article featured allegations by unnamed “United Nations’ experts” that North Korea “has been shipping supplies to the Syrian government that could be used in the production of chemical weapons.” It asserted that

“possible chemical weapons components” were “part of at least 40 previously unreported shipments by North Korea to Syria between 2012 and 2017 of prohibited ballistic missile parts and materials that could be used for both military and civilian purposes.”

The article claims the newspaper “reviewed” a 200-page report by the purported UN experts. It admits that the document has not been officially released and, according to a UN official cited in the article, there are no plans to publish it. The article further concedes that “experts who viewed the report said the evidence it cited did not prove definitively that there was current, continuing collaboration between North Korea and Syria on chemical weapons” [emphasis added].

Following the Winter Olympics, South Korean President Moon Jae-in indicated he was ready to talk to North Korea and engage in diplomacy. And while Vice President Mike Pence – who earlier announced severe sanctions on the North –first signaled a willingness to talk, he quickly seemed to change course.

President Trump further indicated that he is considering a preventive military strike on the North if the sanctions failed to denuclearize the communist nation. But such a so-called “bloody nose” strike against North Korean missile sites and nuclear facilities stands an excellent chance of becoming a bloody disaster.

China won't tolerate an unprovoked attack on North Korea, and President Moon will not support the use of South Korean forces as part of a U.S. military strike against North Korea.

Envoys representing South Korea regrouped at the Seoul Air Base in Seongnam on Monday before leaving for North Korea.

The purpose is with the aim to persuade Pyongyang to hold talks with the United States towards nuclear disarmament and peace on the Korean peninsula.

Headed by President Moon Jae-in’s national security director Chung Eui-yong, the 10-member delegation was seen meeting at the airport before taking off for a two-day trip that may include a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

North Korea lambasted the US for making up preconditions for dialogue between states, as Seoul prepares to send an envoy to Pyongyang to find a way to ease the nuclear standoff.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Saturday that dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington is "possible," but underscored that it will happen only on equal footing and without preconditions.

"There had been no case at all where we sat with the US on any precondition, and this will be the case in future, too" the spokesman said, according to North Korea's KCNA agency.

“If the US finally holds joint military exercises while keeping sanctions on the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], the DPRK will counter the US by its own mode of counteraction and the US will be made to own all responsibilities for the ensuing consequences,” North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said in a commentary on Saturday. "The US should clearly understand this and exercise prudence."

North Korea threatened on Saturday to "counter the U.S." if the United States holds joint military exercises with South Korea, saying the drills would harm reconciliation efforts on the peninsula.

The United States is due to start joint exercises in early April, a South Korean presidential security adviser said this week according to Yonhap news agency — the latest in a series of drills that the north has regularly described as a threat.

"If the U.S. finally holds joint military exercises while keeping sanctions on the DPRK, the DPRK will counter the U.S. by its own mode of counteraction and the U.S. will be made to own all responsibilities for the ensuing consequences," North Korea's official KCNA news agency said in its commentary.

China delayed a U.S. request for a United Nations Security Council committee to blacklist 33 ships, 27 shipping companies, and a Taiwan man for violating international sanctions on North Korea, diplomats said on Friday.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This illustrates what I have been saying about a disjointed US foreign policy. The US goads China in the South China Sea and then expects China to help the US with North Korea.

American military leaders who met to discuss a prospective US invasion of North Korea have reportedly claimed the fighting would cause around 10,000 American casualties in the very earliest stages of what could become a protracted conflict.

The New York Times reported that on Wednesday, US military leaders attended a classified exercise in Hawaii to discuss various scenarios that would arise in the opening days of a prospective US invasion of North Korea. The Pentagon stressed that the exercises did not signal that the White House had decided to go to war with North Korea.

President Moon Jae-in of South Korea told President Trump on Thursday that he planned to send a special envoy to North Korea as part of his effort to broker talks between the United States and the North on ending its nuclear weapons program.

President Moon’s office said he talked with Mr. Trump on the phone on Thursday to discuss joint strategies, based upon the discussions Mr. Moon and his aides have held with senior North Korean officials who visited the South last month to attend the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Pyeongchang.

The valves, thermometers and acid resistance tiles Syria may have sought to acquire could be used for medical facilities, the production of candy or for dozens of other civilian purposes. They could be used to produce something for the military with chemical weapons probably being the most unlikely.

But like the discredited aluminum tube story, the current NYT piece, written by its UN reporter Michael Schwirtz, obfuscates the doubts about WMD connections of the issue. It makes false claims and is full of war-mongering assertions by hawkish figures. It is a scare story constructed to vilify various opponents to U.S. hegemony on meager factual grounds.

In the past year the Corps has upped the ante in its preparation for a major cold weather confrontation with a power like Russia or North Korea — a fight likely to prove more physically taxing and hellish than the Middle Eastern climes the Corps is accustomed to.

Attention to the smallest of details can be a matter of life and death, and even the most mundane of tasks take longer.

“What you see taking a long time is just day-to-day operations,” said 1st Lt. Wilson J. Fortune, a platoon ­commander with the U.S. Marines deployed to Norway.

In recent history, from the Vietnam war to the present, the month of March has been chosen by Pentagon and NATO military planners as the “best month” to go to war.

With the exception of the War on Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO and allied led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.

The Ides of March (Idus Martiae) is a day in the Roman calendar which broadly corresponds to March 15. The Ides of March is also known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.

Lest we forget, the month of March (in the Roman Calendar) is dedicated to Mars (Martius), the Roman God of War.

For the Romans, the month of March (Martius) marked “the time to start new military campaigns.”

North Korea has reportedly sent ballistic missile and chemical weapons components to Syria in violation of United Nations sanctions, according to a draft of a new report authored by U.N. experts that has been viewed by several news organizations.

According to the 200-page report, expected to go public in mid-March, U.N. investigators say the items include acid-resistant tiles, valves and thermometers, according to The New York Times. The transfers reportedly date back as far as 2008.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Trying to manufacture a justification to attack North Korea by linking it with Syria?

Countering an assumed Iranian threat that is no threat at all and triggering a catastrophic war would be a major mistake that would lead to a breakdown in the current political alignment of the entire Middle East. And it would be costly for the United States.

Fort Shafter faces a huge challenge in updating evacuation plans for American civilians in South Korea should war break out on the peninsula, experts say.

Asia expert Ralph Cossa said estimates of the number of Americans in Seoul on any given day run in the 200,000-to-300,000 range, if not more.

Any evacuation would be "extremely daunting, and likely to cause chaos, even if air assets are available, but especially if they are not," said Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum in Honolulu, a subsidiary of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Adm. Harry Harris, head of U.S. Pacific Command on Oahu, revealed at a Feb. 14 House Armed Services Committee hearing that Gen. Robert Brown, commander of U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter, and his staff had been tasked with creating an updated "noncombatant evacuation operations" plan, or NEO, for South Korea

Webmaster's Commentary:

It is not a question of "if" this war will happen; it is now more a question of "when", since this study has been greenlit about two weeks ago.

US special envoy on North Korea Joseph Yun, an advocate of direct diplomacy with the reclusive nation since 2016 has informed the State Department of his intention to retire on Friday.

Though he didn’t offer a specific statement on this sudden decision, it came immediately after President Trump’s most recent comments spurning direct talks with North Korea without massive preconditions.

Though North Korea has expressed willingness to talk, the White House has made clear that they will only talk if they are guaranteed that total nuclear disarmament of North Korea results before the talks themselves begin.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I can certainly understand why Yun did this; he must be catastrophically disappointed in Trump, and in the Trump Administration's hard line on North Korea, which most probably means that Trump is getting ready to greenlight a military action against it.

Remember: demonization of a country, plus placing harsh sanctions against it (as the Trump Administration did last week) is nearly always a prelude to war.

Speaking of which, also at antiwar.com, comes the following article, linked from wapo.com:

The last time HMCS Chicoutimi crossed an ocean, the boat flooded, caught fire, and a sailor died. Nearly a decade and a half later, the diesel-electric submarine has deployed to Asia — farther from home than any Canadian sub in five decades — on a mission the Canadian military hopes will erase doubts about the vessel's effectiveness.

Though planned for more than a year, the mission comes at a particularly sensitive time.

North Korea's nuclear and missile development activity has spiked in recent months despite trade sanctions. International tensions have risen to the point where the U.S. is considering options that could include a military strike on the Korean Peninsula.

The United Nations has shared a yet-unreleased report with US newspapers contending that North Korea has been sending material to Syria to make chemical weapons, but Rick Sterling of the Syria Solidarity Movement says there is good reason to be skeptical.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they do have some trade between those two countries — but chemical weapons? I'm very skeptical of that," Sterling told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear on Tuesday. "Just because something comes from the United Nations doesn't mean it's objective or neutral."

President Donald Trump ripped Russia on Monday by accusing Moscow of undermining U.S. and international sanctions on North Korea.

Addressing a gathering of state governors at the White House, Trump lauded China for its efforts to curb North Korea’s economic activity but said "Russia is sending in what China is taking out".

The Trump administration has been leading international efforts to curb Pyongyang's ballistic missile and nuclear programs through robust UN and Washington-imposed sanctions regimes.

In addition to Russia, Trump blamed previous presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama for failing to reign in the North, saying they should have solved the problem "long before I got here.

North Korea has been sending supplies to Syria that could be used to produce chemical weapons, a United Nations Security Council diplomat has told CNN.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the diplomat said that North Korea had sent acid-resistant tiles, valves and thermometers to Syria. The diplomat was citing a report on North Korea authored by a UN panel of experts.
The same report also claims North Korean missile experts visited Syria in 2016 and 2017, after the chemical weapons supplies had been sent to the Middle Eastern state.
During one of the trips, the technicians stayed at Syrian military facilities. A UN member state reported to the panel of experts that scientists from North Korea may still be operating in Barzeh, Adra and Hama.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Let's start with the fact that once again, a claimed chemical weapon attack blamed on Assad doesn't have any proof connected with it. And we know that Trumps' big problem is that he doesn't have any real justification to carry out an unprovoked attack on North Korea. So, this so-called UN report smells like propaganda to drag North Korea into the "Assad is gassing his own people" fable. For all we know, the anonymous United Nations Security Council diplomat could be Nikki Haley herself.

While suspect ships have been intercepted before, the emerging strategy would expand the scope of such operations but stop short of imposing a naval blockade on North Korea. Pyongyang has warned it would consider a blockade an act of war.

Hoping to expand on diplomatic gains made surrounding the Winter Olympics, South Korea is pushing for the US and North Korea to both ease their stances a bit and get to the table for direct negotiations and quickly as possible.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in in particular said the US needs to lower its threshold for talks, citing long-standing US preconditions, while North Korea should make it clear they’re willing to discuss nuclear disarmament.

North Korean officials have broached the subject in the past, saying they would be willing to disarm their nuclear program if the deal ends the threat of US attack, which they believe they need a nuclear deterrent to preclude.

White House officials reiterated over the weekend that they would only talk if there was a guarantee that the talks would end in North Korea’s denuclearization.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I would love to think that this was possible; but North Korea will not stand down from its position to remain a nuclear-armed country, as a deterrent to a US invasion, and the US government will not stand down from its position that it will not talk unless North Korea denuclearises.

So what we have here... is the potential for a catastrophe which may will impact the entire planet.

Expect China to join the fray on North Korea's side, should the US start this war; the best hope would be for China to remain neutral, if North Korea started an attack on any US assets, but were I a betting human being, I would not bet on that happening.

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org
On Wednesday, February 21st, the UK’s Minister of Defence, Conservative Gavin Williamson, announced that the United Kingdom is changing its fundamental defence strategy from one that’s targeted against non-state terrorists (Al Qaeda, etc.), to one that’s targeted instead against three countries: Russia, China, and North Korea. He acknowledged that a massive increase in military spending will be needed for this, and that “savings” will have to be found in other areas of Government-spending, such as the health services, and in military spending against terrorism.

The headline in the London Times on February 22nd was “Russia ‘is a bigger threat to our security than terrorists’”. Their Defence Editor, Deborah Haynes. reported:

The threat to Britain from states such as Russia and North Korea is greater than that posed by terrorism, the defence secretary said yesterday, marking a significant shift in security policy.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Forgive me, but has this gentleman, and the entire government of the UK, gone collectively barking-dog mad, in this assessment?!?

Or, was it theirs to make in the first place, or a determination forced upon them by the current US administration?!?

With so much of their country already living in the abject misery of poverty because of the British government's austerity program, what will the future tooling up of their war machine, possibly coupled with conscription of Britain's youth, mean for Britain's future?!?

So I have a statement for Mr Williamson to ponder: Those who do not understand the past (Iraq) are doomed to repeat it (Russia, China, Korea).

On Friday, 2/23/18, the Trump Administration announced the implementation of even stronger sanctions against North Korea to force it into compliance regarding its nuclear weapons. The New York Times reported on the revised sanctions, and here’s an excerpt:

The measures target 27 shipping companies and 28 vessels, registered in North Korea and six other countries, including China. The Treasury Department said the shipping firms are part of a sophisticated campaign to help North Korea evade United Nations sanctions restricting imports of refined fuel and exports of coal.

President Trump later released the following statement to reporters during a joint news conference with the Prime Minister of Australia as reported by Reuters on Friday, 2/23/18:

“If the sanctions don’t work, we will have to go to phase two, and phase two may be a very rough thing, may be very, very unfortunate for the world.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Boarding another nation's ships in international waters without permission constitutes piracy under maritime law.

On Friday, president Trump announced that his administration would be hitting North Korea with the “heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before.” The new penalties target dozens of ships and shipping companies that have (allegedly) been helping Pyongyang sustain its economy — and thus, its nuclear program. Specifically, these firms have allegedly enabled Kim Jong Un’s regime to evade previous sanctions by helping it trade illicitly with other countries while at sea, as opposed to on land, where such verboten commerce would be more easily detected.

The move represents an escalation of the White House’s latest strategy for combating the North Korean nuclear program: Pursue direct talks with Pyongyang — while imposing maximum economic pain on the regime — in hopes of forcing Kim Jong Un to denuclearize without unleashing “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

North Korea has been depicted by the Western media as a dangerous rogue state, plotting the nuclear holocaust of America and holding global peace and stability hostage with its irrational aggression. It is the supposed threat North Korea poses to the world that the United States uses to justify its enduring decades-long military presence on the Korean Peninsula.

In the recently released 2018 US Department of Defense Nation Defense Strategy, it claims:

North Korea seeks to guarantee regime survival and increased leverage by seeking a mixture of nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional, and unconventional weapons and a growing ballistic missile capability to gain coercive influence over South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

US President Donald Trump yesterday exploited a joint press conference at the White House with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to once again menace North Korea with crippling economic sanctions and a military onslaught. Trump’s comments come as the Winter Olympics in South Korea are about to close and the US and South Korea prepare for massive joint war games in April.

In a suspiciously soft response - particularly after its ally China accused the US of "long-arm jurisdiction - North Korea criticized Washington's decision to impose sanctions on marine vessels supplying North Korea with banned goods that could help support its nuclear program, but said it would still be open to talks with its longtime geopolitical archnemesis.

China issued a stern rebuke of enhanced US sanctions on North Korea on Friday, saying the unilateral targeting of Chinese firms and individuals accused of supplying Pyongyang with prohibited cargo risks harming international cooperation on the problem.

"The Chinese side firmly opposes the US imposing unilateral sanctions and 'long-arm jurisdiction' on Chinese entities or individuals in accordance with its domestic laws," said the Chinese Foreign Ministry in a statement. "We have lodged stern representations with the US side over this, urging it to immediately stop such wrongdoings so as not to undermine bilateral cooperation on the relevant area."

An analyst believes US sanctions on Chinese companies over having ties with North Korea are a form of “economic warfare” against China.

“This may be seen as sanctions in the Western press, all over the British newspapers for example … but it is not. It is a form of warfare and economic warfare nowadays is becoming much more important in many ways than actually fighting on the ground. So this is a very clear signal to Beijing that Washington is trying now to impose policy on Beijing,” Tony Gosling told Press TV in an interview on Sunday.

The US has engineered some unprecedented and crippling international sanctions on North Korea since July when Pyongyang intensified its tests of long-range missiles and nuclear bombs.

The latest North Korean delegation to the South has reiterated the nation’s eagerness to pursue diplomacy, saying North Korea is “very willing” to hold direct talks with the United States.

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has been pushing such talks, saying that the US and North Korea need to talk at “an early date” as a way to make further diplomatic progress after some major improvements between North and South Korea at the Winter Olympics.

Getting the US to the talks may be easier said than done, however, with the White House issuing a statement Sunday saying they would only be interested in entering the talks if it were guaranteed that North Korea’s denuclearization would be the result of the talks.

China has demanded the US reverse its decision to impose fresh sanctions on North Korea, saying the "unilateral actions" could undermine cooperation between Beijing and Washington.

China's foreign ministry said it had lodged "stern representations" with the US over the measures - which prohibit US citizens from dealing with more than 50 vessels and companies, and one person, located in countries including North Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong - in a statement on Saturday.

"The Chinese side firmly opposes the US imposing unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction on Chinese entities or individuals in accordance with its domestic laws," Geng Shuang, foreign ministry spokesperson, said.

The Trump administration is coordinating with key Asian allies to crack down on ships suspected of violating sanctions imposed on North Korea, Reuters reports.

The joint effort between the U.S. Coast Guard and regional partners including Japan, South Korea, Australia and Singapore, would go further than ever before to physically block deliveries of banned weapons, components for its nuclear missile program and other prohibited cargo. Suspected violators could be targeted on the high seas or in the territorial waters of countries which cooperate with the coalition. Up to now, suspect ships have been intercepted on a far more limited basis.

Depending on the scale of the campaign, the U.S. might even devote a portion of air and naval power from the Pacific Command - though the plan would stop short of a full naval blockade according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Boarding another nation's ships in international waters without permission constitutes an act of piracy under maritime law.

China has demanded the US reverse its decision to impose fresh sanctions on North Korea, saying the "unilateral actions" could undermine cooperation between Beijing and Washington.

China's foreign ministry said it had lodged "stern representations" with the US over the measures - which prohibit US citizens from dealing with more than 50 vessels and companies, and one person, located in countries including North Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong - in a statement on Saturday.

"The Chinese side firmly opposes the US imposing unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction on Chinese entities or individuals in accordance with its domestic laws," Geng Shuang, foreign ministry spokesperson, said.

"The Chinese government has been comprehensively and strictly implementing the Security Council resolutions on the DPRK and fulfilling its international obligations, and never allows any Chinese citizen or company to engage in activities in violation of the Security Council resolutions."

A North Korean envoy making an uncommon visit to South Korea said Sunday that his country was willing to open talks with the United States, a rare step toward diplomacy between enemies after a year of North Korean missile and nuclear tests and direct threats of war from both Pyongyang and Washington.

Kim Yong Chol, who Seoul believes masterminded two attacks in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans, was in South Korea for the end of the Olympics. He said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wanted to improve ties with Washington and had "ample intentions of holding talks" with its rival, according to the South's presidential office.

The United States has warned Iraq, among a number of other countries, of the consequences of extending military cooperation with Russia, and striking deals to purchase advanced weaponry, particularly the S-400 surface-to-air missile defense systems.

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Neuert said on Thursday that Washington has contacted many countries, including Iraq, to explain the significance of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), and possible consequences that would arise in the wake of defense agreements with Moscow.

On August 2, 2017, US President Donald Trump signed into law the CAATSA that imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

If you weren't paying attention, you might have missed it; but during today's joint press conference with Aussie PM Turnbull, US President Trump let slip a brief comment that the rest of the world should likely be paying close attention to.

After unveiling the "heaviest sanctions ever imposed on a country before" against North Korea earlier in the day, President Trump told the gathered media that the US will go to "Phase 2" if those sanctions do not have the desired effects of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

As Reuters reports, in addressing what the Trump administration calls its biggest national security challenge, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned one person, 27 companies and 28 ships, according to a statement on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website.

The United States also proposed a list of entities to be blacklisted under separate United Nations sanctions, a move “aimed at shutting down North Korea’s illicit maritime smuggling activities to obtain oil and sell coal.”

The decision of the head of the UN to endorse economic sanctions against North Korea has provoked a sharp retort from the country’s representatives, who accused him of being an American lackey.

Pyongyang has accused UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of making “reckless remarks” after he delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference praising the international restrictions imposed against North Korea.

"This is nothing but an absurd sophistry inappropriate to his duty as Secretary-General of the United Nations and only make us to think whether he is a kind of henchman who is representing the United States,' a statement made by North Korean envoys to the UN said.

“I think it’s important that every American knows who this person is and what she’s done,” Pence said of Kim Yo-jong.

From the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) stage Pence countered positive media coverage of Kim Yo-jong at the opening of the Olympics in South Korea, with details of her role as a “central pillar of the most radical and oppressive regime on the face of the planet. An evil family clique that brutalizes, subjugates, starves, and imprisons its 25 million people.”

“Even the United Nations reported that, in their words, the gravity, scale and nature of these violations would be a state that does not parallel in the contemporary world,” he continued.

Written largely by the most prestigious British scientist of his day, this official report, containing hundreds of pages of evidence about the use of US biological weapons during the Korean War, was effectively suppressed upon its original release in 1952.

Courtesy of researcher Jeffrey Kaye, INSURGE now publishes the report in text-searchable format for the first time for the general public, with an exclusive, in-depth analysis of its damning findings and implications.

The report provides compelling evidence of systematic violation of the laws of war against North Korea through the deployment of biological weapons?—?a critical context that is essential for anyone to understand the dynamics of current regional tensions, and what might be done about them.

The US and South Korea will go ahead with military drills off the Korean peninsula despite the “Peace Olympics” and the recent thaw in North-South relations, the South’s defense ministry said in a report to the National Assembly.

In the run-up to the Olympic Games in PyeongChang, Seoul was able to convince Washington to delay the start of their annual winter/springtime joint military exercises until after the games. The temporary halt to the annual Foal Eagle/Key Resolve US-South Korea joint military exercises allowed North and South Korea to develop a dialogue that the South hopes will ease the mounting tension in the region.

South Korea and the United States will announce plans before April for joint military drills that had been postponed until after the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, South Korea’s defense minister said on Tuesday.

Two weeks ago, followers of geopolitics couldn't help but speculate about the chances of a clandestine meeting between North Korea and the US when the news first broke that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's younger sister, Kim Jo Yang, would be attending the Winter Games in PyeongChang.

After all, US Vice President Mike Pence was already confirmed to be stopping by South Korea during the beginning of the Games as part of a five-day Asia tour. But the White House was quick to repudiate this chatter, announcing that there were no plans for diplomatic talks, though both US and North Korean rhetoric since then has left the door open for such a meeting.

But as it turns out, just as the White House was denying it, plans for talks were being set in motion, according to the Washington Post, which reported Tuesday evening that the North Koreans backed out of a meeting with Pence at the last minute.

But in a shocking development that's almost guaranteed to contribute to speculation about whether any foul play was involved, the Wall Street Journal reports that one of the country's top crypto regulators was found dead Tuesday.

While some speculated that the cause of death was a heart attack, the official statement - so far - is that the cause of death remains"unknown."

Semiofficial news agency Yonhap reported that Mr. Jung was presumed to have suffered a heart attack and police had opened an investigation into the cause of death. Yonhap also reported that Mr. Jung was found at home. The government spokesman said later that “he died from some unknown cause. He passed away while he was sleeping and [his] heart [had] already stopped beating when he was found dead.”

His death comes barely a month after the country's regulators appeared to settle on a suitable regulatory framework: Crypto exchanges and banks will soon be required to collect customers' names and information.

North Korea is quietly expanding both the scope and sophistication of its cyberweaponry, laying the groundwork for more devastating attacks, according to a new report published Tuesday.

Kim Jong Un’s cyberwarriors have been accused of causing huge disruption in recent years, including a massive hack on Sony Pictures in 2014 and last year’s WannaCry ransomware worm, as well as numerous attacks on South Korean servers.

Two senators who attended the Munich Security Conference over the weekend affirmed that the US has not developed a so-called "bloody nose" strategy to take out North Korea's nuclear arsenal - contrary to prior reports in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere.

"We are here to echo that there has not and has never been a bloody nose strategy," said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island. Whitehouse said he and other lawmakers who attended the conference were briefed by National Security Adviser HR McMaster had briefed a Senate delegation in a secure annex of Congress before the group traveled to the Munich Security Conference, he said on Sunday in the Bavarian capital.

The media’s demonization of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, especially in the realm of American news, continues a pattern seen in years past. From Iraq to Venezuela, the corporate media’s depiction of inhabitants of foreign territories is meant to remove their autonomy and humanity, and this is exactly what’s happened in the case of North Korea.
***
Yet countless articles depict North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as “a madman,” and U.S. politicians routinely characterize Kim as “crazy,” while pundits invade our television screens to openly fantasize about wiping North Korea off the map. As if they were talking about a piece of paper and not 25 million human beings.

With talk of a “bloody nose” strike against North Korea being debated in Washington, public attention has focused on conventional military preparations for a U.S. attack on Pyongyang. Less noticed, but possibly even more telling, is the surge in recent months of intelligence resources.

Senior officials have made no secret of the fact that the administration is ramping up its intelligence capabilities to focus on the Korean Peninsula, but six sources familiar with U.S. planning described a nearly unprecedented scramble inside the agencies responsible for spying and cyber warfare.

In fact, the initial strike against the North Korean regime could be digital rather than physical, according to two former intelligence officials with knowledge of the preparations.

NORTH KOREA will continue to feel "firm and strong" pressure from the United States Government until despotic leader Kim Jong-un agrees to shut down his dangerous weapons development programme, US Vice President Mike Pence warned.

Meanwhile, China, which produces nearly half of the world’s steel, is accused of flooding the market in order to keep its economy robust at home.

“I will make a decision that reflects the best interests of the United States, including the need to address overproduction in China and other countries,” Trump said.

“They’re dumping and destroying our industry, and destroying the families of workers, and we can’t let that happen,” he added.

Although the president has another two months to make a decision on possible penalizing action, he strongly indicated that he wants to punish Beijing.

Experts, however, say that any such action will prompt China to do the same, raising the specter of a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

Trump is under pressure at home as he has not been able to deliver on his campaign promise of being a champion of America’s Rust Belt.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Upon reading this, I am having a double Picard face-palm, at warp speed.

After really needing nore cooperation with China on the issue of North Korea's nuclear program, and desperate to convince South Korea that Kim Jung Un's overtures to South Korea were really just theatrics, President Trump's timing of these threats against China and South Korea just possibly could have been worse: I just don't know how.

US Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris, testifying Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, accused North Korea of making its recent military advances exclusively with an eye toward forcibly unifying the Korean Peninsula “under a single communist system.”

Admiral Harris scorned the idea that North Korea had gotten nuclear arms to try to protect North Korea from a US-imposed regime change, saying he believes Kim’s ambitions are to “blackmail the South and other countries in the region, and us.”

He was led into this answer by Committee chair Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), who said the only reason anyone believes Kim is getting the weapons for deterrence is because “alternatives are too terrible to contemplate.”

But Admiral Harris seemed fine echoing this view, despite North Korea being very public about deterrence being a top priority, and despite North Korea’s recent diplomatic overtures making no sense at all if Kim’s exclusive goal is to conquer South Korea.

Webmaster's Commentary:

US Pacific Commander Admiral Harris, a word, please.

If Kim invited South Korea's President Moon to Pyongyang, do you think for one minute Kim's goal is to hold him as his prisoner, in order to extract some kind of geopolitical "price" from South Korea, knowing that it would goad the US into some kind of retaliatory measures?!?

Admiral, Kim is many things; but irrational and unreasonable are not among them.

Regurgitating the old, tired US Deep State's propaganda on North Korea, as a narrative to justify invading it, cannot possibly sway the US populace to embrace such a decision; we have all had our fill of US-generated wars, which appear to be going nowhere; Afghanistan; Libya; Iraq; and Somalia come very quickly to mind, sir.

And I would like to politely remind you; we have lived with nuclear-armed governments which the US just has had a hard time liking, in any way, like Pakistan.

It has nuclear weapons, and even though it has now been put on the US "funds terrorist groups" Watch List, I seriously doubt we are going to invade that country any time soon.

And why?!?

Because it has nuclear weapons as a deterrent, Admiral: it is just that simple.